Feminists Decry Heidi Prosecution as Unequal Justice : Scandal: Gloria Allred and NOW say a double standard exists and call for the arrests of the male clients. Police say their actions are limited by the law.

A Los Angeles women’s organization and a feminist lawyer Friday denounced the prosecution of alleged madam to the stars Heidi Fleiss, calling on police to “put as much energy and effort into the arrest of the ‘johns’ ” as they have put into their pursuit of Fleiss.

Attorney Gloria Allred called it a double standard to pursue Fleiss so aggressively while Fleiss’ rich and powerful Hollywood customers are getting off the hook.

“It seems to me that if a person alleged to be a madam is being prosecuted, then law enforcement should be equally concerned with male customers,” Allred said in an interview. She further criticized the investigation Friday night in a speech titled “Poetic Injustice” delivered to a meeting of the National Assn. of Woman Lawyers in New York.

Separately, the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women charged that the law enforcement effort that led to Fleiss’ arrest “indicates a system that still doesn’t get it.”

“The LAPD will be watched intensely . . . to see if the arrest of men involved, regardless of their position in the entertainment industry, matches the effort against Ms. Fleiss,” said Tammy Bruce, president of the local chapter of NOW.

NOW also said the case shows how Hollywood continues to treat women as inferiors, saying it suggests that “they only know how to hire a woman if she’s represented by a madam.”

Police have repeatedly said that vice investigators going after the Westside prostitution trade have no plans to arrest customers.

Capt. Glenn Ackerman, who heads the LAPD’s administrative vice unit, defended that policy in an interview, saying authorities’ hands are tied by the law, which specifies that solicitation must be witnessed by police.

“What? Does Ms. Allred have a game plan for me?” Ackerman asked. “I’d be real interested in how I’m supposed to go about this. The mere fact some name is in a madam’s or pimp’s book legally means nothing.”

Fleiss, the 27-year-old daughter of a Los Feliz pediatrician and a schoolteacher, faces felony pandering and narcotics charges as the result of a police investigation by several agencies that culminated in her arrest June 9. Police allege that she operated one of the West Coast’s most exclusive call girl rings, serving a celebrity clientele.

At the time of her arrest, Ackerman said her arrest was the result of a long-term vice sting conducted by the LAPD, the Beverly Hills Police Department and the state Department of Justice.

The sting, Ackerman said, was part of an organized effort to target the high end of the city’s call girl trade. By midweek, police had arrested three other alleged madams and one alleged panderer, including Fleiss’ ex-boyfriend Ivan Nagy, a television and film director. Nagy could not be reached for comment this week, but earlier denied any wrongdoing.

One veteran law enforcement officer said Fleiss, Nagy and the others arrested had all been on a 43-name list of high-profile madams, pimps and call girls in Los Angeles. The officer said police had known about Fleiss’ operation for at least the past three years, but had been powerless to arrest her because they lacked an inside informant. It was not until the department joined forces with Beverly Hills police that inside access was gained, the officer said.

Beverly Hills police Lt. James Smith confirmed that informants developed by his detectives were an important part of the case. He said the joint effort developed in October, when Fleiss was arrested by Beverly Hills police for allegedly using a fraudulent credit card gift certificate to purchase $20,000 worth of designer sportswear at a trendy Beverly Hills boutique. Fleiss was not charged.

When Los Angeles police learned of the Beverly Hills case, Smith said, they proposed a joint operation using an undercover Beverly Hills officer. The officer, Detective Sammy Lee, eventually led the sting operation by posing as a Honolulu businessman and persuading Fleiss to send four prostitutes and some cocaine to the Beverly Hilton for a group of officers posing as Japanese clients of Lee, police said.

Allred said police could have easily included male customers as part of their lengthy investigation into Westside prostitution.

“It appears from reports that there has been surveillance for an extended period of time,” Allred said. “During this surveillance, what efforts were made to arrest the johns? It’s not as if this just happened last week.”

Ackerman said that given the Police Department’s limited resources, going after the madams and pimps instead of customers is a more efficient way of dealing with the problem.

“Even if a customer is paying $10,000, we would take him to court and he would still get that little fine ($100 or so) that one of our street tricks gets and end up with summary probation. This is far and away the most effective method of controlling organized prostitution,” Ackerman said.